Food security cause for concern, UN says

Some 32 days after Central African Republic (CAR) rebels attacked the capital, Bangui, food security remains a cause for concern, although not at crisis point, according to the Office of the UN Resident Coordinator. It reported in its bulletin on Wednesday that food shortage was due to the lack of vehicular traffic between Bangui and a number of provincial towns, "notably in the north and the east", which under normal circumstances supplied the city. The Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) monitoring system, the UN said, had indicated a scarcity of animal and vegetable products, especially onions, most of which usually came in from the north "and whose price has increased by more than 200 percent" over the past four weeks. Beef prices had increased by 100 percent and smoked fish by 67 percent since the crisis started, it stated. Butchers have abandoned better-controlled abattoirs for makeshift facilities. The UN said because of the potential health hazard this posed, the public should be sensitised to the need to ensure that all meat was cooked thoroughly before consumption. The FAO, the UN said, would continue until next week to support small-scale farmers and fishermen while assessing the impact of the crisis on their activities. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) had completed the pre-positioning of emergency food supplies at gathering points in Bangui, and for displaced people along the road leading northwards from Bangui to Boali, the UN reported. "The next phase includes emergency response to affected population groups in unaccessed areas, especially in the east of the country, and increased support to targeted vulnerable groups whose numbers are increasing from day to day," it said. It reported that one sign that poverty was increasing daily was that people were selling their belongings cheaply to buy food and medicines. However, it said that the "WFP is not in a position to feed a large percentage of the population". Instead, the food agency had decided to focus additional efforts and resources on food support for young children, pregnant and nursing women, hospital patients, and vulnerable groups that could be effectively reached. The WFP, the UN said, was seeking contributions to its Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation, "a large portion of which will be used to assist the most severely affected population to reconstitute their assets and rebuild their lives when the conflict ends". Health and sanitation More material and sanitation products were needed, the UN said, to exhume and rebury hurriedly interred corpses in a bid to prevent re-exposed bodies being washed away by heavy raid and causing disease. Initial funding for this activity had come from the UN Development Programme and, non-UN agencies which would now be identified to continue this task. Two major health zones remained cut off from their resupply depots in Bangui, the UN said, due to the closure of the Bangui-Damara-Sibut road. The result has been a shortage of essential medicines and vaccines (BCG, DTC, polio, and yellow fever) in the regional pharmaceutical depots. "These zones are also short of fuel for the cold storage chains, and important stocks of vaccines have been destroyed in some part of the country," the UN said. It went on to warn that the epidemiological situation had become more alarming with reports of suspected cases of meningitis in Bambari and in Ndele. Vaccine stocks in these locations had been destroyed as a result of fuel shortage for cold storage. It said the World Health Organisation had donated 75,000 doses of anti-meningitis vaccines and 38,000 doses of chloramphenicol. "The real solution to this problem must, however, start with the reopening of the Bangui-Damara-Sibut road, as well as other essential roads through which medical supplies are transported to different parts of the country," the UN said. Refugee situation Slightly more than 50,700 refugees in CAR, originating from 22 different African states, had been affected by the rebel invasion of the capital and the subsequent fighting, the UN said. They lived mostly in Mboki, Bangui and Molangue, in order of importance. Sudanese (36,000) constituted the bulk of the refugee population, followed by 10,000 from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). "Chadians, Congolese [Republic of] and Angolans constitute the other significant groups," the UN said. Although there had been no reports that refugees, as a group, had been specifically targeted, the UN said, many Congolese from the DRC claimed they had been beaten, harassed and expelled from their homes in retaliation for the actions of the militia which had come to the country from the DRC to help the government in Bangui put down the rebellion. Internally displaced persons The UN reported no concentrations of internally displaced persons (IDPs) as a result of the current crisis. "The most significant IDP cases remain the Chadians and Congolese who have continued to seek refuge at their respective embassies in Bangui," it said. Chadians had been complaining that troops of the Mouvement de liberation du Congo (MLC) had looted their homes. The Chadians had asked for medicines and food, and UN and humanitarian agencies had responded by counting 3,038 Chadians living in an area 12 km outside Bangui, currently under MLC control, the UN said. This figure included 421 women and 1,309 children, of whom some 1306 had requested assistance for repatriation. Consultations were ongoing with the Chadian embassy to determine the position of the Chadian government on the issue before assessing what support the UN system could provide. In the meantime, the Chadians had been persuaded to return to their homes while a solution was being sought, the UN said. Despite the repatriation of 1,777 Congolese to the DRC a couple of weeks ago, the number of Congolese IDPs at the DRC embassy in Bangui had once more risen to 587, including women and children, who were requesting support for repatriation, the UN said. The health conditions at the embassy were presently untenable, and more people had continued to arrive there, complaining of revenge attacks by Central Africans claiming to have suffered in the hands of the MLC. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Bangui was in contact with its counterpart in the DRC, as well as with the CAR authorities, in an effort to find a solution, the UN bulletin said. In his speech on 25 November, President Ange-Felix Patassé called on the population to show hospitality to the Congolese and Chadians resident in the CAR, in a bid to calm things down.